Phantek Eclipse P400S Review

This time I want to give you a little product review. I basically just have done one in my life, with the DIY Freenas Server Build that I did a few months ago. This time I want to give you a Phantek Eclipse P400S Review.

Out of lack of time due to travel, work and family, I wasn’t quite able, or willing, to upgrade my computer in recent times. The last time I upgraded was around 4 years ago, with a new Asrock Z77 Pro3, 16GB Crucial Ram, a gloriousi5 3570k and a Geforce GTX 670. This system lastet me until about a year ago when I wanted to play Fallout 4 and was really pissed I had to turn it down to Medium / High. Yet it should take another year until I found a good deal on a Strix Geforce 1060 6Gand finally hit the buy button.

Well, the card arrived, I unpacked it and removed the 670 from my case, shit, It doesn’t fit. The 1060 being to long, I had to get a new case. I wanted a new case anyway.

After doing a fair bit of research, I was looking for some budget solution, and a few videos of Hardware Canucks, I made my decision.

I finally wanted to get rid of the mess in my old tower and have all the cables hidden. This case seemed to do the trick. Lets dive into it.

The complete package, the Phantek Eclipse P400, my old tower and the new GTX 1060. The Eclipse was packed in 2 different cartons for protection.

Unpacked! The first look is glorious. The finish looks and feels amazing. I opted for the anthrazit version. The tempered glass comes wraped in protective foil. The case is really lightweight too.

Phanteks logo on the bottom, really subtle. This baby comes ON the desk, so much is for sure.

Back of the case. Plain and functional. The power supply sits on the bottom. The case comes with 2 pre-installed very silent 120mm fans. One on the front, one on the back.

The case after removing the glass. Nothing much going on there. Just lots of space. Both pre installed fans can be seen.

The cable management side of the case, or the back of the case after removing the cover. I really like the simplicity of this.

But before we can start to put our hardware in, we need to get it out of the old case first! That’s a good opportunity to clean everything up and give the rock solid i5 some new thermal paste!

Yes, oh my god, you are exactly right. This case served me well over the past ~8 years. It’s heavy, it’s solid, it’s well cooled but it’s days are over. Even being a huge tower, ther eis little space in it as you can see. Let’s put all the hardware out.

Everything laid out on the antistatic mat. Cleaning everything up with pressured air and removed the old paste from the CPU and cooler.

As good as new!

The glorious i5 after the cleanup, ready to receive his paste. It’s clocked to 4,2 GhZ without water cooling btw, I love this CPU.

Assembly time! Look at how much space there is! It’s ridicilous! The assembly of the mainboard to the already pre screwed distance screws was a breeze.

I had to remove the pre-installed cooler on the back, otherwise this big ass Zalman cooler wouldn’t have fit. It does a great job keeping the CPU temperatures low. Removing the cooler was a breeze, I attached it on the front of the case instead.

The backside of the case. Sliding the 2 SSD’s and the 2TB HDD in was a breeze. It’s amazing how they managed that system in a budget case like this. Everything feels solid. Cable management is a breeze, too.

The 1060 fit’s in easiely. You can see the 2 fans on the front now. Look at this cable management compared to the old case. It’s a dream and it was so easy to set everything up. (I never used a cable management system like this before and I think it ended up pretty nice).

Back on with the tempered glass. Looks really amazing. So clean.

Switched on, on my desk. The red LED bar came with the case. I probably will put it on another position. I love the minimalist look of it.

View from the front. A monolith.

The 1060’s pulsing red glow. Welcome home.

LED illuminated front logo.

The top of the case and the power button. There are a few buttons on the top where you can:

Adjust Fan speed in 3 levels: Low, Medium, High

Change the LED color of the case

Reset the computer (which i found out the hard way)

And of course, the power switch and 2 USB 3.0 and 2 USB 2 plugs.

I really had a blast assembling this case. Everything was so easy and looked clean right out of the box. I didn’t even put special effort in making everything perfect, yet it looks great.

CONCLUSION:

For the price of just 89$ I am really convinced that this is the best budget case one can wish for. I’ts minimalistic look, high quality materials and easy assembly make this case a no brainer for the budget aware upgrade. It’s plenty of space in the case and it comes well cooled out of the box. If you plan on upgrading your case, don’t think twice, go for the Phantek Eclipse P400S.